The summer passed in a haze of work and two close calls when Aaron was in the area but before she knew it, Keeley stood in front of her dorm building with two suitcases and her father in tow.

It was time for her to move in because school started the following day. They used her recently acquired student ID card to pick up the key downstairs before lugging her things up to the third floor.

As a freshman, she would be living in a traditional style dorm with no kitchen and a communal bathroom.

Her room consisted of two beds, two desks, two dressers, a mini fridge, and a microwave. It was long, skinny, and had a single window located between the two beds.

She decided to claim the right side of the room and asked her dad to set down the box of school supplies and wall decorations that he was carrying to help her set up a little.

“Where do you want this?” he asked, holding out a few sheets of flower wall decals.

She looked up from where she was putting away clothes and squinted at them.

“Oh, I’ll deal with those later. I want to spread them out across my half of the room evenly. Could you start organizing school supplies on my desk? I have a little plastic storage box with drawers for them.”

“Sure thing, honeybun. Where’s your backpack? Do you need any to go in there too?”

“The notebooks should already be in there but I have a little pencil case. If you could put a couple of pens, pencils, and an eraser in it I’d appreciate it!”

Keeley did not have nearly enough room in this dresser for all of her clothes, as suspected. It was a good thing she only brought seasonal items and could go home to swap things out in her bedroom in Brooklyn anytime she wanted. It would still be warm for another month or so before she had to break out the fall outfits.

After unpacking nearly everything she decided to do the decorations herself and sent her dad off with a hug and kiss on the cheek, promising to come visit him the following Sunday and make dinner. He hugged her tightly and told her to call him after her first day to tell him how it went.

Just like that, he was gone and Keeley was left alone in her new home. She finished setting up the corkboard on her desk with a few photos on it and was working on spreading out the decals of roses, daisies, and leaves around when the door opened.

A petite Hispanic girl with curly hair stood in the doorway with three large suitcases.

“Hi!” she greeted with a Spanish accent. “I’m Valentina Benavente. Nice to meet you!”

Keeley set her decals on the bed and hurried over to help her with her bags. “I’m Keeley Hall. Here, let me take something.”

Valentina smiled gratefully. “Thank you. Have you been here long?”

“Only about an hour. My dad helped me move in. Do you have anyone with you? If you don’t I can help you unpack.”

“I would appreciate that! I’m here alone; my parents sent me off at the airport in Lima. I want to go to an American medical school before going back home and opening up a practice,” Valentina disclosed cheerfully.

She had been here less than two minutes and had been smiling the entire time.

“Oh, you’re from Peru? That’s so cool! I’ve lived in New York City my entire life but I’ve always wanted to travel,” Keeley said as she finished putting up the wall decals before helping her new roommate.

“You will have to show me all of the good places around here then.”

“Sure!”

They happily chatted about their expectations for their first year of college as they set up the room and discovered that they would be taking a lot of the same science classes in the future because their majors had a fair amount of overlap. They even shared the same introductory biology class this semester.

Keeley was thrilled to meet such a friendly person right off the bat.

Once the room was set up, it was about dinner time so they headed to the main dining hall nearby. Valentina was fascinated by all the different types of food and asked tons of questions.

The dining hall was similar to a buffet but not quite. There were several stations offering different meal plates that could be chosen at will, plus a dessert bar that also boasted an assortment of cereal and a waffle maker for breakfast.

Keeley got a plate of chicken with mashed potatoes and green beans plus a blueberry muffin. Valentina wanted to try a bit of everything and got plates from multiple stations, making her roommate laugh.

“Slow down there, friend. You’ll be able to try everything by the time the school year ends. I guarantee you’ll be sick of the repetition at some point.”

She remembered how tiring the meal plan got back at Boston University. They had a rotation of different meals every two weeks but that was still not a lot of variety to last two semesters. It was such a relief when she moved out of the freshman dorms into an apartment that had a kitchen.

Valentina was a bit sheepish. “You are probably right…but I have never seen this much American food in one place before.”

Keeley clapped a hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t worry, you’ll get acclimated soon enough. I have to ask…have you ever had pizza? Or a hot dog?”

“Yes but I’m sure they are different here than they are back home.”

“I’ll have to take you to the best places around here then!” A thought struck her. “Oh, do you have a job?”

The other girl nodded. “Yes, I have a work visa to be a TA for an upper level Spanish class in the linguistics department.”

That was good. Eating out in the city was not cheap.

“That sounds a lot nicer than my job,” she said with a laugh. “I work at a Burger Barn.”

“I have never been to a Burger Barn before. Should I go there?”

“Nah, you’d be better off getting a higher quality burger somewhere else. We’re meant to be cheap, fast, and easy but not necessarily good. If you want I can take you to a nice burger place, don’t worry!”

By the end of the dinner Keeley felt like she had made a new friend. Back in their dorm someone knocked on their door asking if they wanted to come down to the rec center and join the ping pong tournament going on.

They decided to do it since there was nothing better to do and ended up meeting a fair number of their neighbors that way. Dorm life had officially begun and Keeley loved it.